Michele's Story
Michele is a leader in a variety of mentoring and uplift programs for formerly incarcerated women, and her long term goal is to open a transitional home for women returning from incarceration.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians was the answer. The question: Which TV show do PGP student Michele Gantt and her tutor, Kaya Kim, both watch? They needed to find this common ground so Kaya could support Michele in writing an analysis of race, class, and gender in popular culture for one of Michele’s classes at John Jay College. Despite the difference in their ages and life experiences—Kaya is in her 20s and grew up in the Philippines, and Michele is a lifelong New Yorker in her late 50s—the two women quickly become a team, focusing single mindedly on one goal.
When Kaya and Michele were matched in the spring of 2022, Michele was struggling to keep up with her coursework at John Jay College, where she is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Human Services and Community Justice. She already had incompletes from the fall semester, after experiencing two deaths in her family, which had made focusing on school difficult, and she was falling behind on her spring semester coursework. Once Michele and Kaya started working together in mid-April, they quickly tackled Michele’s incompletes from the fall and started working methodically to get Michele caught up in her spring semester classes. Thanks to Kaya’s availability and the flexibility of tutoring over Zoom, they were able to meet as often as four times a week, much more often than the typical tutoring cadence for PGP students. “From April 15 we have worked nonstop—every day an hour, hour and half” Michele explains.
Michele credits Matt Wilson, the PGP’s division manager in New York, with finding the perfect tutor. Kaya is a senior at Columbia University majoring in women’s and gender studies with a minor in race ethnicity. “Matt has been a lifesaver; he connected me with a tutor on very short notice. He was able to match me with someone who has knowledge of the class almost right away. Kaya is familiar with the content. It worked out so well; we just knocked out the assignments.” By the end of April, Michele was caught up on all her assignments and was even able to complete extra credit assignments to get her grade up to a B-. “Kaya has been so helpful. I couldn’t have done it without her” Michele says. Kaya adds, “One of my happiest moments was when Michele got a B from the class she had an incomplete in. We did that! It was a class from last year, she’d had an incomplete for over six months; we did the homework together.”
“I have excellent support, but a lot of women don’t have that support”
Matt Wilson underscores just how exceptional this tutoring partnership is: “In the first few weeks of tutoring, Michele and Kaya met 16 times—sometimes meeting four times in a single week! In my experience, this is truly remarkable—not just the number of sessions, but how quickly Michele is meeting her goals.”
Michele heard about the PGP from fellow student Aisha Redellant, whom she met through College and Community Fellowship, an organization that supports women with criminal justice involvement in earning college and graduate degrees. Aisha and Michele are both involved in CCF’s Uplift mentorship program, and Aisha was quick to recommend the PGP when she heard about Michele’s challenges. Michele has since returned the favor by referring another CCF student to the PGP—a testament to the impact of the PGP’s tutoring.
For Kaya, the most rewarding aspect of being a tutor is the partnership between her and Michele. “[Tutoring] is not just that I give information or I lead her; it’s more being together; when you do things together it’s more effective and more fun; you don’t have to be good at math—just being together with someone and rooting for their success is a great,” Kaya says.
Michele plans to complete her bachelor’s degree by the end of 2023 and pursue a master’s degree in social work. She began her academic journey at the College of New Rochelle years ago, but didn’t complete a degree; during her incarceration, Michele participated in a credit recovery program that allowed her to leave the facility with an associate’s degree in liberal studies from Medaille College. “I was so excited to get the actual degree,” Michele said.
Michele is a leader in a variety of mentoring and uplift programs for formerly incarcerated women, and her long term goal is to open a transitional home for women returning from incarceration. “I have excellent support, but a lot of women don’t have that support” Michele said. Working with Kaya has made it possible for Michele to stay on track and continue working toward her goals. “I really enjoy [Kaya] and we have a relationship outside of school,” Michele says. “I’m so glad she has another year of school so we can work together while I finish the program.”